Macau’s number of visitor arrivals dropped 99.7 per cent year-on-year to 11,041 last month, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced today.

Month-on-month, the figure was down by 94.8 per cent.

Both overnight visitors (6,383) and same-day visitors (4,658) recorded year-on-year declines of over 99.0 per cent, the statement pointed out.

Due to COVID-19 quarantine measures, overnight visitors stayed significantly longer (+18.9 days), at 21.1 days on average, which led to a rise of 6.2 days in visitors’ overall average length of stay to 7.3 days.

The number of mainland visitors dropped 99.6 per cent year-on-year to 10,500, or 95.1 per cent of the total. There were only 328 visitors from Hong Kong and 210 from Taiwan last month.

In the first four months of the year, visitor arrivals totalled 3.23 million, a year-on-year decrease of 76.6 per cent.

Macau’s economy has been severely affected by the novel coronavirus pandemic since late January, the tourism, gaming, retail and media sectors in particular.

Meanwhile, according to a separate DSEC statement on Wednesday, visitors’ total expenditure (excluding spending on gambling) declined 70.4 per cent year-on-year to MOP 5.01 billion (US$630 million) in the first quarter. Visitors’ per capita spending dropped 4.8 per cent year-on-year to 1,555 patacas in the first three months.

In the first quarter, Macau’s tourism sector has been affected by the suspension of ferry links with Hong Kong and Guangdong, the drastically reduced number of passenger flights, vehicular traffic restrictions across the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and 14-day quarantine for visitor arrivals.